Data Protected Bike Lanes Project was a Huge Success
Our first big collective action event sent a strong message
--
If you’ve ever ridden a bike, you know unprotected bike lanes are a total gamble for your safety. Drivers are perfectly happy to park, idle, or otherwise block bike lanes — and it’s always “just for a minute.” But e very minute bike lanes are blocked is a minute that people on bikes are at risk.
The size and scope of this problem is hard to quantify — which is why we built OurStreets. What gets measured, gets managed.
Most of our beta testers used the OurStreets app (formerly How’s My Driving) on a regular basis, but often only had time to report a few violations on their journey. To better understand the scale of the blocked bike lane problem, we knew we needed a synchronized, collective effort to make the need for protected bike lanes clear.
That’s why we staged the first-ever Data Protected Bike Lane Project on Wednesday, May 15. We organized over 60 volunteers from our pool of beta testers, positioned on key blocks across the city, to record bike lane violations during morning rush hour (7:30–8:30am), the lunch rush (12–1pm) and evening rush hour (5–6pm).
Thanks to these dedicated volunteers, we recorded over 700 bike lane violations in one day — equivalent to 25% of all bike lane related citations issued in DC in all of 2018.
OurStreets founder and CEO Mark Sussman and DC Bicycle Advisory Council chair Rachel Maisler took a deep dive into the data. Read their Greater Greater Washington writeup of what we learned from the #DataPBL project.
Some of the key takeaways:
· We can see that 14th and Irving by DC USA is the number one hot spot. Other areas of high activity included Metro Center, Navy Yard, and 14th St between Logan Circle and U Street NW.
· Speed camera citations were the overwhelming majority of citations we saw in vehicles with citations.
· DC vehicles have a relatively high rate of outstanding citations, but a relatively low number are eligible for tow — since outstanding citations must be paid off when renewing a vehicle registration. Meanwhile, if a Maryland or Virginia driver has unpaid citations in DC, those tickets won’t show up in their state’s DMV database when they go to renew the tags.
